us, than our search into Scripture has hitherto
furnished.

3.

There certainly is another method of conversion upon private judgment
described in Scripture, which is much more to our purpose, viz., by
means of the study of Scripture itself. Thus our Lord says to the Jews,
"Search the Scriptures"; and the treasurer of Candace was reading the
book of Isaiah when St. Philip met him; and the men of Berea are said to
be "more noble than those of Thessalonica, in that they received the
word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily,
whether those things were so." And it is added, "therefore many of them
believed." Here at length, it will be said, is a precedent for such acts
of private judgment as are most frequently recommended and instanced in
religious tales; and indeed these texts commonly are understood to make
it certain beyond dispute, that individuals ordinarily may find out the
doctrines of the Gospel for themselves from the private study of
Scripture. A little consideration, however, will convince us that even
these are precedents for something else, that they sanction, not an
inquiry about Gospel doctrine, but about the Gospel teacher; not what
has God revealed, but whom has He commissioned? And this is a very
different thing.

The context of the passage in which our Lord speaks of searching the
Scriptures, shows plainly that their office is that of leading, not to a
knowledge of the Gospel, but of Himself, its Author and Teacher. "Whom
He hath sent," He says, "Him ye believe not. Search the Scriptures, for
in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which _testify
of Me_." He adds, that they "will not come unto Him, that they may have
life," and that "He is come in His Father's name, and they receive Him
not." And again, "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me, for
he _wrote of Me_." It is plain that in this passage our Lord does not
send His hearers to the Old Testament to gain thence the knowledge of
the doctrines of the Gospel by means of their private judgment, but to
gain tests or notes by which to find out and receive Him who was the
teacher of those doctrines; and, though the treasurer of Candace appears
in the narrative to be contemplating our Lord in prophecy, not as the
teacher but the object of the Christian faith, yet still in confessing
that he could not "understand" what he was reading, "unless some man
should guide him," he lays down the principle bro